Much ado essay
by Jeanne Prouvaire
Summary: Just an essay I did for English, want reviews to see what mark you think I'll get. Also a plea for new much ado fics, because no one reads the formus anymore.


**How Does Shakespeare Present Different Kinds of Love in Much Ado About Nothing?**

**Just an essay comparing the couples in Much Ado, this is my English assessment this term, and I want to see (Particularly those who know how the uk gcse mark system works) what you think I'll get for it.**

In the play, Much Ado about Nothing, Shakespeare presents two couples, each with a different kind of love within their relationship. These two couples are Hero and Claudio, and Benedick and Beatrice. Each couple also has a very different kind of personality within the relationship. This essay will compare the two couples and their relationships, and show how they differ.

We know that Claudio and Hero have, at the start of the play, met before, from Claudio's comment to Don Pedro in the first scene that before they went to war he "looked upon her with a soldier's eye" which implies that he saw her, but thoughts of the looming war drove thoughts of love to the back of his mind, and Shakespeare also uses "looked upon her" to suggest that they only met briefly, and they do not know each other well.

Claudio and Hero often talk about each other, but do not actually talk directly to each other much. When Claudio decides that he wants to marry Hero, he does not even propose to her himself, but gets his friend Don Pedro to woo her for him. Shakespeare uses this to suggest that Claudio, although not cowardly, is afraid he will say the wrong thing to Hero, and does not trust himself to speak directly to her. When they do speak to one another, they speak almost entirely in formal, romantic blank verse, with a pattern of traditional Iambic pentameter, the medium favoured by many Elizabethan playwrights for characters of high status, and scenes of great formality. Shakespeare does have a tendency to break this rule, with educated characters speaking (as I will go on to discuss) in lively prose, a medium generally used for lower status characters and more relaxed scenes. This makes the play easier to listen to, and the frequent breaks in the pattern keep it from becoming monotonous.

Shakespeare does not give Claudio and Hero long to fall in love. Not a whole day has passed since they have met again, without anxiety over an imminent battle to distract them, and Claudio has already told Benedick and (more successfully) Don Pedro that he is in love with Hero, and Don Pedro has agreed to woo Hero for Claudio. By the end of the day Hero and Claudio are engaged, by the end of the play (by the end of the week) they are married.

When Claudio is first approached by Don John, at the masked ball, and Don John tells him, pretending to be under the impression that Claudio is Benedick, that Don Pedro wants Hero for himself, Claudio instantly believes him, saying "'Tis certain so, the prince woos for himself, friendship is constant in all other things, save the office and affairs of love!" and then goes and sulks at Benedick. Shakespeare uses this, and the fact that the next time Don John tries to trick him, with something even more unlikely (Hero's 'infidelity') he again believes him, not looking closely enough to recognise Margaret, not Hero, at Hero's window, and then publicly humiliating Hero at the wedding, suggests that when faced with a problem, Claudio is very naïve, and will both believe and do anything he is told.

When Hero is faced with a problem, she may try to defend her case a little (Shakespeare may be using this to show the influence of Hero's growing up with Beatrice, who never _stops_ defending her case), but will soon give up and start to cry, and/or, when falsely accused by Claudio at the wedding, faint (showing how Hero still differs greatly from Beatrice in personality).

Shakespeare finally unites Hero and Claudio by a combination of the levelheadedness of Friar Francis, the sheer stubbornness of Beatrice and Benedick, and the love Hero's father and uncle hold for her, hatching a plan to pretend she is dead, until she is proven innocent by the inept but good hearted city watch, and their even more incompetent watch captain, Dogberry. Hero is then presented to Claudio a second time, under the guise of being Antonio's daughter, until she lifts her veil and speaks to Claudio, and he realises she is Hero.

Benedick and Beatrice, on the other hand, are a very different couple. Shakespeare implies that they have known each other for a long time with Beatrice's muttered statement in Act 1 Scene 1"You always end with a jade's trick. I know you of old", which suggests that she has argued with Benedick a sufficient number of times to recognise his style.

They argue like siblings, both in the sense that they do so constantly, and in that neither of them derives much offense from the other's statements – They know one another too well to get offended, not to mention the fact that each is no doubt used to having such little barbs pushed under their skin by the other. They speak largely in relaxed and lively prose, showing the informality and obvious normality of their battles of wit. In fact both barely speak in verse at all, Shakespeare clearly wishes their speech to remain informal and flexible throughout, allowing for longer, more amusingly timed, and more elaborate pieces of wit, without remaining within the confines of the iambic pentameter rhythm, which would ruin the timing and the punchlines of most of their jokes and insults.

Although Benedick and Beatrice have been an item before, as revealed by Beatrice at the masked ball – "Indeed, my lord, he lent [his heart] me a while, and I gave him use for it, a double heart for his single one", which indicates that they have been together before, allowing Shakespeare to give the plot a whole new twist, but Beatrice then goes on to say "marry once before he won it of me with false dice, therefore your grace may well say that I have lost it", and evidently they have been at loggerheads ever since. It takes their friends tricking each into thinking that the other is still in love with them to bring them together. However, once convinced, it takes both of them only a few minutes argument with themselves to fall in love, hence Benedick's comment at the second wedding "for man is… a giddy thing" which, if you look at his own example, seems pretty well justified.

Both Beatrice and Benedick have a habit of arguing with a problem (most commonly when the problem is each other, also when the problem is the subject of marriage coming into a conversation) until it goes away, but when a problem becomes too much for her to handle, Beatrice loses her temper. When Claudio slanders Hero at the altar, Beatrice wishes that she were a man so that she could challenge Claudio to single combat, but knowing she cannot, and Claudio having left the church, she takes her fury out on Benedick instead. Fortunately, Benedick, by this point in the play, loves Beatrice too much to get angry.

Shakespeare portrays Benedick's style of arguing (Whether at a problem or not) as different from Beatrice's in that he thinks more before he says things, so he seems rather more amiable when in public. For example, when Beatrice is shouting at him after Claudio's slander of Hero, Benedick replies as calmly and rationally as it is possible for someone who is clearly just as inwardly shaken as Beatrice to do. However, once Benedick is alone, he rants away to himself, saving his fury for when he is on his own, rather than doing what Beatrice does and venting his anger on the next person to speak to him.

Personally, I think Benedick and Beatrice have the more appealing relationship, as they (Once they no longer hate each other) have friendship within their relationship as well as love. They enjoy laughing together and gently winding each other up, and Shakespeare demonstrates that they can take a joke, laughing off Don Pedro's poking fun at them at the second wedding ceremony, meaning that their teasing of one another will not cause a serious argument. Hero and Claudio, on the other hand, although they love one another, barely know each other, and although Claudio is obviously genuinely penitent for what he has done, Shakespeare gives nothing to suggest Claudio has become any less gullible by the end, and this gullibility might come between them in future – If it were not for the matchmaking efforts of Beatrice, described by Don Pedro as "having a merry heart", Claudio would have fallen for Don John's first trick, making him believe that Don Pedro was wooing Hero for himself, and breaking Claudio and Hero apart even earlier!

Shakespeare, on the other hand, seems to favour the Hero/Claudio relationship, making it the main plotline, with Beatrice and Benedick's relationship as a mere sub plot. Hero and Claudio's story is a traditional one, there are several literary instances of a man seeing a woman he thinks to be his lover or fiancée at his love's chamber window, with another man. Beatrice and Benedick's story seems to have been a complete Shakespeare invention, and at the time would have been too modern to make the main plot.

I think that Shakespeare was generally pro love and marriage, as the two characters in Much Ado who have sworn never to marry (Benedick and Beatrice) have been married off (to each other, ironically) by the end of the play, without too much of a fight. Shakespeare has written too many love sonnets, and too many plays in support of love and marriage, to be against love in his philosophy.

**That's all, folks! Reviews were sort of the point of me uploading this, so plenty of 'em please! (Fictional)jelly watch to the author of the next much ado fic, there haven't been any for ages!**


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